The moment of truth; will the new boards and the mattresses for the v-berth fit? Drumroll please…
Yes, it all fits! Pff, such a relief that we do not need to adjust them again. Bed mattresses are quite big and a pain to handle. The only thing we need to do now to successfully wrap up this project is to hand-stitch the cushions to close them. One done, three more to go.
On to the next project: the solar panels. We bought two 100 watt panels optimized for our northern latitudes where the sun is known not to make a regular appearance. We want to attach them to our life lines at the side of the cockpit, but unfortunately our panels didn’t came with holes. And it’s quite scary to drill holes in your brand new – and not exactly cheap – solar panels. Plan is to drill holes, fit them with grommets and use carabiners to hang them from the life lines. After gathering courage Jeroen finally drilled the first hole and pounded in a grommet. Looks promising!
But due to a sudden hailstorm we had to postpone the drilling exercise. More luck tomorrow.
Today is the start of a new adventure. No, this is not an April fools’ day joke. We’re about to go on a trip with our sailboat to the Baltic Sea. The idea is to visit all the 10 countries that border the Baltic Sea in 6 months. But this plan is not set in stone. If we won’t get any further than the north of the Netherlands it’s just as fine. It’s all about the journey, isn’t it?
We will start out by sailing north via the ‘Staande mast’ route (Fixed mast route) through the Netherlands. That way we can get used to travelling, fix whatever is necessary to fix along the way before we’ll get to the Baltic Sea and see a part of the Netherlands we haven’t seen before.
And it’s a good thing that we aren’t on a tight schedule because we are already delayed before we have even started. It is said that chores on a boat always take longer than anticipated. Our chores form no exception to the rule, hence the delay.
Before the big trip we had to do some necessary repairs and chores. Especially since we still have a small storage here at the marina and a place to work on bigger projects. One of those projects was a complete refit of the v-berth. Condensation is always an issue in a polyester boat, so we had to make some adjustments to keep the moisture at bay. We sawed new boards for under the mattresses with big holes in them to enable air circulation underneath. The varnish is drying nicely, tomorrow the boards will have fully cured.
The mattresses themselves needed to be replaced as well. We had done the settee and the chart table cushions a year ago, but somehow didn’t find the time to do the v-berth as well. Making cushions is not that difficult, especially if you have the old cushions for tracing the shape. The thing to keep in mind is that you need to cut the foam one centimetre bigger than you measure, and later on the fabric one centimetre smaller than the foam. And don’t forget the seam allowance when cutting the fabric of course.
Thus we ordered big blocks of foam and cut the shapes for the cushions with an electric bread knife. The perfect tool for the job. We also bought the fabric for the new upholstery and cut that out as well. No, not with the bread knife. Just regular scissors this time. It was very convenient that we were still in our marina. The central area of the sanitary space is so big -and relatively clean- that we could lay the foam and the fabric on the floor and cut everything there.
After sowing the pieces of fabric together, one of the covers wouldn’t fit so we had to redo that one today. Tomorrow we’re going to try and fit the boards and cushions into our v-berth, hopefully they’ll fit. Fingers crossed…
The final departure date is now set on Sunday the 7th at the latest.
